This is an eye opener for my late troubling dreams.
I wonder what can I do about and how to integrate them
into daily life?.

ken gilleo

01/21/12

A basic principle of dream theory, at least from the Freudian
perspective, is that the dream helps sooth the sleeper to maintain
sleep, perhaps by reviewing, assimilating and reorganizing disturbing
events of that day. Many, but certainly not all, view the dream as a
window into the subconscious that can alert the dreamer, or
therapist, to events that need to be dealt with. Not sure if this study
adds anything that has practical value..

manuelhm, md

01/21/12

Memories don't have to be disturbing to be better consolidated after
sleep. There had been numerous studies showing the importance of sleep
before taking exams..

Colenso

01/27/12

The Medpage report summary makes no mention of dreams
per se, merely rather that "Those with more REM sleep
had less attenuation of negative pictures". In their
abstract, the authors conclude that "Recognition
accuracy was greater following sleep relative to wake
for both negative and neutral pictures. While emotional
reactivity to negative pictures was greatly reduced
over wake, the negative emotional response was
relatively preserved over sleep. Moreover, protection
of emotional reactivity was associated with greater
time in REM sleep. Recognition accuracy, however, was
not associated with REM." We may conclude from the
study therefore, first, that if we don't want to be
more likely to remember vividly the gory details the
next day, and still be affected by what we saw, then we
ought not watch a horror film last thing at night.
Second, however, how much time we spend dreaming (in
REM sleep) will not affect the accuracy the next day of
our recollections of what we saw just before we went to
sleep. Much more importantly, if we witness or are
involved in a traumatic event whose effects we want to
attenuate as quickly as possible, then we ought to stay
awake after the event, not go to sleep..